Summary
đź‘Ą A game for 2 to 4 players
⏳ Play time is around 35 minutes
🏢 Publisher is Matagot
Introduction
In Kyoto no Neko, players take on the role of cats exploring the modern city of Kyoto, Japan, through replayable scenarios. Each scenario challenges players to complete various missions that capture the essence of feline life—whether it’s befriending a schoolboy, battling a fierce stray, or sneaking food from another cat’s bowl.
As the game unfolds, players develop their skills, climb rooftops and bushes, and unlock new areas of the map. To win, you’ll need to earn medals by completing objectives—be the first to collect five, and you’ll be crowned the ultimate Kyoto cat!
Let’s get in on the table
Starting with the first player and in clockwise turn the player will take their turn. If at the end of a full round of turns, the game end wasn’t triggered by any player, the first player starts a new round.
A player’s turn is divided into 3 phases;
Phase 1 Movement
You can move your kitten as many steps as allowed, shown on your player board. You can only move into a straight line, not diagonal. When you move and there is a face down Paw, just flip it.
When it contains a red background and an orange Objective, even if you not just flipped it, you have to react to it directly by doing a skill check. In this case it is a reaction (not an action). If you are successful then you can continue your turn. If you failed the skill check, your turn is over.
When it contains a white background, you can choose what you want to do, make friendship with it (hart icon), fight with (claws icon), or hunt on it (bow and arrows icon)
When you cross the roads, a bike card is drawn and both of the bikes will move several steps. If a bike goes through or stops on a kitten’s space, you must reactie with an agility check.
A kitten can’t move through roofs or hedges unless their agility level allows it, that means that if you want to move to hedges you need +4 and when you want to be on a roof you need +6
Phase 2 Action
Possible actions are determined by the Paws presented on the space where your kitten has ended their movement. Reactions must be resolved before performing an action. When there are several actions, you can choose what action you would like to perform. But remember, you can only do one action on each turn!
To perform a skill check with a Paw, just roll one skill die and add that to the level of the skill you’ve used (on your player board).
-If the sum is lower then the objective or when the die has shown a X, the action fails. You now can counter that skill one space upwards, 2 if you rolled an X).
-If the sum is equal or higher then the objective, you are successful. You now gain the paw and at it to your victories tally (player board) or to your home when you’ve made a new friend (on the main board, next to your home/ start point). You don’t move your counter upwards!
When you’ve successful climb a tree action, you can secretly look at 3 Paws
On Paws you see at the bottom of them 1 or 2 different icons, those icons are when you failed a skill check.
When it has a red icon, your kitten flees. This means that the next player moves your kitten x spaces towards your home space using the shortest path possible. When you land on a space with another kitten, red Paw or on the road, you move 1 space further to home.
When it has a whit icon, your kitten will also be moved by the next player but in this case just to any space on the board but only that many steps as mentioned on the Paw. This move is mandatory and you have to be moved to a different space then your starting space.
Phase 3 Missions
This phase is only when it’s applicable. In this phase you can obtain medals, grow of kittens . Also check if the end game conditions are triggered.
When you’ve successful achieved one ore more Missions, receives a medal from each Mission card and place it from left to right on your victory space. When any players has placed a second and a fourth medal, all the kittens in the game will grow.
You can also receives a medal when you’ve placed a 4th Paw on your Victories tally and when you’ve placed a 3th Paw on your friend track.
Scenario’s
In the box you will find different Paws, missions cards, new encounters, etc. Just choose a scenario and look at the components you need for that specific scenario and add it to the components for the base game.
Place the scenario mission cards on the scenario board.
Set up the Paws; each scenario specific Paws must be placed randomly on the central area board when containing the icon for it. Place the other Paws on all the spaces of the board but keep 16 Paws a side, then remove that many Paws with the one from the scenario and place them back in the box. Shuffle the scenario and the normal Paws together and place them on the central player board.
There are 7 different scenario’s that are in the scenario booklet but you can create your own if you want, just choose 5 random mission cards by using at least 1 mission cards with a green background and an with on orange background and one with a red background.
Conclusion & our score
Difficulty: 1.88/ 5
Re-playability: 8
Our score: 7,5 out of 10 dice
At Spiel 2024 we were introduced to Kyoto no Neko for the first time and what a lot of fun it looked like even then. After a very nice conversation with the publisher and a short demonstration of the game, we went home even more enthusiastic.
Kyoto no Neko is really a family game, it alone looks very cute but also the actions you have to do are really nice and well incorporated into the game. Setting up will take a little more time the first few times but you will soon master this. Besides the fact that everything just looks nice, everything is also in handy boxes for each player so you have everything together.
The trees and the other game pieces such as the grandpa and grandma on the bike are recommended to be glued so everything stays in place.
The game is very clear in terms of rules, you can do anything but if you do something you have to finish that turn, especially if you also encounter a dog with a red chit. Fortunately, the game is very friendly, because if you perform an action and it fails e.g. because you did not roll the dice correctly, you even get an extra token of that value. So you never lose.
The theme is really well incorporated, cats have to fight dogs, want to be friends with e.g. butterflies or want to eat mice or birds.
The ultimate goal, getting 5 medals, is not very difficult but can sometimes be a challenge because you have to move a lot to get to the right chits. But you have a total of 7 medals and you only have to obtain 5 of them. Two of these medals can be won by making 3 friends or catching a number of animals or fighting and winning the battle. The other one can be won by obtaining the goal cards, of which there are always 5 in each game that are linked to the scenario.
Kyoto no Neko plays quickly, within 30 minutes you can achieve a scenario, but you can also play several scenarios and vary them. Oh and did we mention that it looks like a lot of fun?
Are you curious now? Kyoto no Neko seems to be coming out in Dutch as well so even more suitable to play soon.
We want to thank Matagot for this review copy and the opportunity to write about it.
